Chapter Text
White roses.
White roses have always been Maggie’s favorite.
The bouquet they’d tossed over their heads, that had ultimately been caught by M’gann, had consisted of white roses, and the flower had adorned seemingly every surface on that big day too.
Every birthday, every Valentines Day, every just-because-I-wanna, Alex buys white roses. Today was no different. She purchases them, as always, from the florist around the corner from work and, unable to help herself, she excitedly tells Kayleigh, the proprietor, the reason behind her visit.
Alex is happy.
Alex has never been happier.
The universe hates her being happy.
The universe always tries to find a way to try to bring her down.
And as she turns the corner onto their street, her eyes instinctively travelling up to their apartment window, the universe pulls out their ace.
A figure crashes through the glass, arms flailing, screaming, plummeting.
Not any figure.
It’s Maggie that hits the sidewalk with a sickening thud, mere metres away.
The white roses slip from Alex’s grasp.
Blood is pooling.
Limbs are broken.
Body is twitching.
Eyes fluttering shit.
Dy--.
Alex wakes with a jolt.
Maggie stirs. ‘Hey.’
Alex’s chest feels tight, sweat sticks her pyjama top to her skin, and she can’t get that image out of her mind. It felt too real. She feels sick.
Even in her sleepy state, her wife quickly realizes it wasn’t some generic bad dream. ‘Babe, I’m here,’ she says softly as she sits up. ‘You okay?’
A few seconds, a few deep breaths and Maggie’s gentle touch helps to bring her heart back to a normal rate. ‘Yeah, I...bad dream.’ As it always was at this time of the year.
‘And that’s all it was,’ Maggie reassures. ‘A dream. There’s no bad here, it’s all good.’ She reaches for Alex’s hand and places it on her stomach. ‘See? All good.’
Alex rubs her wife’s growing belly, the curve of the bump subtle but just pronounced enough to feel. All good . All perfect . ‘This day…’ She sighs. ‘It fucks with my head.’
‘I know, love. I know.’ Maggie rests her forehead against Alex’s clammy temple. ‘But today’s a fresh start. We make new memories today. Happier ones. Ones that will make today a better day for you, for us, and for our family.’
‘Our family,’ Alex echoes, a smile tugging at her lips, as it always did, when she said that out loud. That was one dream she’d always wanted to come true and, this year, finally, it had. ‘Yeah. We will.’
Maggie strokes Alex’s cheek with her thumb. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’
‘No, I--.’ Alex shakes her head. ‘No, I want to forget about it.’
‘Okay,’ Maggie nods. ‘You know I’m always here if you want to get it out of your system though.’
Alex knows that, and she’s grateful. ‘Thank you.’
‘Always,’ Maggie smiles. ‘Now come cuddle us.’
Us . Every ounce of that earlier tension in her body dissipates as she lays back down and wraps her arms around her wife and her child, her own, and much longed for, little family - the other member of that little family, Gertrude ‘Trudy’ Sawyer-Danvers, sleeps at the foot of their bed as always.
Alex was very much liking this new normal already.
*** *** ***
Morning comes.
She feels better.
She feels so happy.
It’s easy to feel like that, to put that nightmare behind her, when she’s presented with the most wonderful sight in the world - her wife standing naked in the bathroom, marvelling over the life that’s blossoming within in front of the mirror.
‘Look at you two.’ Alex wraps an arm around her wife’s stomach. They’d noticed their little one beginning to make their presence known the other day at the doctor’s office, even going so far as to ask said doctor to confirm their eyes weren’t playing the most wonderful trick on them. ‘You know,’ Alex nuzzles Maggie’s neck. ‘There’s only so much longer we’re going to be able to keep this a secret.’
Maggie smiles back at their reflection. ‘You wanna tell people?’
‘Only if you do.’
‘And what if I don’t?’ The smile twists into a grin.
‘Then you’re going to be asked a lot of questions for the next six-ish months.’
‘Man, six months,’ Maggie interlaces her fingers with Alex’s. ‘That’s so long.’
‘Scotch sales across the city are gonna tank.’
Maggie laughs. ‘I wasn’t even thinking about that. More like how I’ve got to wait six months to meet our little one.’
It was gonna be tough but they’d waited years for this, six months would be nothing. ‘They’ll be worth the wait.’ So worth the wait .
‘Let’s tell people this weekend,’ Maggie beams.
‘This weekend sounds great.’ Alex can’t wait.
*** *** ***
A second.
She switches off for just one second and pays the price for the lapse, the fist connecting with her face and the impact toppling her. She lands on her ass with a thud and to a collective gasp.
‘Ma’am, I’m so sorry I--.’
Alex slaps the rookie’s helping hand away. ‘Don’t.’ She pushes herself back to her feet. ‘You wouldn’t apologise to your enemy, so you don’t apologise to me.’ Her face is throbbing, an eventual black eye feels like a certainty. ‘Now. We do this again, and nobody apologises.’
The agent nods, but his enthusiasm has been dampened by the incident. He comes at her again but with less gusto and quickly ends up on the ground.
Alex pulls him to his feet and leans in close to whisper into his ear. ‘You did good, kid.’
With a small smile, he bows his head before taking his place with the rest of the group.
‘I’ll see you back here Thursday morning, nine a.m. sharp,’ she says. ‘Class dismissed.’
The spectator, who’d been watching for the past five minutes, waits until the group leaves before coming over. ‘That looked like it hurt.’
‘Yeah, just a little.’ It hurts like hell but she’ll live, she’s been through worse. ‘It’s my fault for getting distracted.’
‘Because of today?’ J’onn asks.
‘For once, no.’ Besides that nightmare of someone pushing her wife out of a window, she hadn’t really given today, the anniversary of her father’s ‘death’ much thought. Instead she was thinking about her future, about the child she’d meet in a few months, knowing that Jeremiah Danvers would be overjoyed for them - they hadn’t any leads on his location for years but she knew, just knew, that he was out there, somewhere, and he’d get to meet his grandchild one day. ‘I’ve got something to show you.’ She grabs her towel and hangs it around her neck before leading the way.
They make small talk through the corridors and in the elevator before finally arriving at her office.
She types in the pincode and they enter. ‘You can keep a secret, can’t you?’
‘You know I can,’ the Martian replies.
She does. ‘Good.’ He may only be loosely connected to the DEO these days, thanks to a partnership that they established with his PI firm, but it was enough for Alex to make him her deputy and he had duly filled in for her when she’d accompanied Maggie to the many, many appointments on their quest to conceive. He was the only one that knew they were trying and, ultimately, if it hadn’t been for him offering her a job in the first place, then she’d never have met her wife, the mother of her child, the love of her life. Telling him first felt right. ‘We’re going to tell everyone this weekend but I just...I think you should know now.’ She hands him the frame she’d tucked away in her top drawer, the frame that was all ready to sit proudly on her desk once the world knew.
His face lights up at the grainy image. ‘I am so, so happy for you two.’
Alex can tell.
He was starting to get a little choked up. ‘How...how far along is she?’
‘Ten weeks,’ Alex says. ‘We found out a couple of weeks ago and, god, it’s been hard keeping it a secret. I just want to shout it from the rooftops, you know?’
J’onn smiles. ‘I know that feeling.’
‘That was taken a couple of days ago, at our first scan.’ Alex perches herself on the edge of her desk. ‘They’re healthy and everything looks good. Tiny, though...apparently this little one is taking after her mama already.’
He chuckles. ‘How is she?’
‘Great,’ Alex answers. ‘No morning sickness, no aches or pains, nothing. Guess all that yoga and a balanced diet works, huh? Don’t tell her I said that.’
‘I won’t,’ she says as she hands the picture back. ‘Like I said, I can keep a secret. Kept one for the past few years after all.’
Years. That was how long it’s taken them, and what had made seeing those two blue lines even sweeter. They’d been so close to giving up, to turning to adoption which, though they both knew was a truly wonderful thing, would be another long process, one that the secrecy of Alex’s career made complicated. Maybe they’d look to it in the future, to give their little one a brother or sister when the time was right. ‘Kryptonians can’t combust, right?’
He laughs again. ‘She might.’
‘She’s gonna be so excited.’ Her sister loved kids and was, at heart, a big kid herself. She was going to make the absolute best aunt. ‘I can’t wait to tell her. And my mom…’ Alex tails off, smiling. Whilst Eliza had never once put any pressure on them to give her grandkids, Alex knew she longed to be that grandmother that baked cookies, that crocheted baby blankets, that saved up pennies to give her grandkids, all of it. ‘I...I can’t believe this is happening.’
The Martian reaches over, enveloping her in a hug. ‘You’re going to be a great mother.’
‘I hope so.’
‘I know so.’ J’onn kisses the top of her head. ‘I need to get back to the office. Pass on my congratulations to Maggie.’
‘I will. Thank you,’ Alex says. ‘For everything. None of it would’ve been possible without you.’
He simply nods, smiles and leaves.
Alex’s eyes drift down to the photograph in her hands, and she runs a finger over the glass as her thoughts drift to all the possibilities, and all the exciting firsts that lay ahead. ‘I can’t wait to tell the world about you soon.’ She feels emotions beginning to choke her. ‘You’re already making me so happy, I--.’
There’s a knock at the door.
She quickly composes herself, putting the frame back in the drawer. ‘Come in.’
It’s the rookie from earlier. ‘Ma’am.’
‘Agent Donovan,’ she greets him. ‘How can I help you?’
‘Agent Dox is requesting your presence.’
She nods. ‘I’ll be right there.’
Donovan turns to exit.
‘Hey.’
‘Yes ma’am?’
‘You have a mean right hook.’
His smile is nervous. ‘Yeah, I, uh...I hope I didn’t hurt you.’
‘It’s nothing that I can’t handle,’ she replies. ‘Next time though? You won’t even come close to hitting me.’
The nerves suddenly seem to dissipate. ‘If that’s a challenge, then I accept.’
She likes that attitude. ‘We’ll see.’
*** *** ***
She hightails it over to the briefing area. ‘Agent Dox, do you not have a--.’ Phone .
There was not a phone in sight but there was pizza. A stack of them that Brainy was proudly standing next to. ‘I thought I would treat everyone to lunch. You are the director, so you can get first choice.’
She should’ve expected this. Every year, since finding out the significance of the date, Brainy would make some gesture to try to make her day a little better. One year, it’d been donuts; another, gummy bears; and so on. She appreciated it immensely. ‘Normal toppings? No apples and olives?’
‘None. Except on mine, of course.’ He opens one box. ‘Margarita.’ And another. ‘Pepperoni--.’
She stops him. ‘Well, you know me...I’ve always been partial to Margarita.’
‘Indeed, and it is especially amusing as that could apply to both your wife and the alcoholic beverage.’
Alex grins. ‘You’re absolutely right.’ Her phone rings. Speaking of . ‘Hey--.’
‘Alex!’
Her stomach drops at the distressed tone. ‘Are you--.’
And drops further and further. ‘My car got hit, it...it seemed intentional, I--.’
‘Where are--.’
‘Shit. They’re coming, I--.’
‘Where are you?’ She asks louder this time, sparking everyone in the DEO’s attention.
‘Corner of Dean Aven--.’ She doesn’t get to finish. Glass shatters. Maggie gasps. The call becomes muffled.
‘Maggie?’
Groans.
Alex’s heart pounds in her chest. It’s like that dream except, except it’s not - this is real.
A voice comes through. A man. ‘Hello, Director Danvers.’
‘Who is this?’
‘You know who this is. And you know why.’
And then, a gunshot.